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Resolving Belief Conflicts through Political Theory: The Case of Two Ottoman Political Thinkers

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Abstract

In this paper we identify and compare the arguments offered by two leading Ottoman public intellectuals in the nineteenth century, Namık Kemal and Ziya Gökalp, on why Western institutions are compatible with those of their own society. We argue that these arguments exemplify patterns of reasoning, identified by cognitive social psychologists, which purport to resolve inconsistencies that arise in individuals’ belief structures. We draw two conclusions from this analysis. Our first conclusion is that the ideas of Ottoman political thinkers, like those of their Western counterparts, constitute a domain of evidence for research in cognitive social psychology. We secondly conclude that political theories have resources to overcome ideological conflicts in a society without resorting to partisanship or utopianism.

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Notes

  1. We use the phrase ‘cognitive social psychology’ to refer to a general research program which, independently of specific theoretical and empirical orientations, considers human cognition not only in terms of phenomena that take place inside the heads of individuals but also in light of social interactions that shape or influence the ways in which human beings conceive of themselves and the world they live in. For more on this research program, see for example Manis 1977 and Schwartz 1998.

  2. ‘[Gayemiz] İslamiyet ile medeniyet-i asriyeyi telif etmektir. Ancak bugüne kadar ülke yönetiminde söz sahibi olan iki parti Avrupa Mutaassıpları ve Medrese Mutaassıpları bu telifi yanlış politikaları sebebiyle gerçekleştirememişlerdir. Birinci parti esȃsȃt-ı İslamiye’nin medeniyet-i hazıra ile itilaf edemeyeceğine kani olarak bütün İslami esȃsȃtı atıp maddi-manevi tüm varlığımızla Avrupa medeniyetine girmemizi istemişlerdir. İkinci parti ise esȃsȃt-ı İslamiye’nin medeniyet-i asriye ile itilafının mümkün olmadığını, dolayısıyla bu medeniyetten uzak durarak ananat-ı mevcudiyetimizle iktifa etmemizin gerekliliğini savunmuşlardır (Ziya Gökalp’, Ittihat ve Terakki Kongresi Münasebebiyle’, İslȃm Mecmuası IV, no.48 (1916).

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for comments on earlier versions of this paper from Ciğdem Bağcı (Psychology, Sabancı), Gaye Ilhan Demiryol (Political Science, Boğaziçi), Sun Demirli (Philosophy, Boğaziçi), Pieter Boele van Hensbroek (Philosophy, Groningen), Berna Kılınç (Philosophy, Boğaziçi), Faik Kurtulmuş (Political Science, Sabanci), David Manier (Psychology, CUNY), Kaya Şahin (History, Indiana), Murat Somer (Political Science, Koç) Jakob De Roover (Comparative Sciences of Culture, Ghent), Murat Şiviloğlu (History, Trinity), Lucas Thorpe (Philosophy, Boğaziçi), and Kenneth Westphal (Philosophy, Boğaziçi).

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  1. Sabancı University, Üniversite Cad.27, Istanbul, Turkey, 34956

    Nedim Nomer & Faruk Aksoy

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Nomer, N., Aksoy, F. Resolving Belief Conflicts through Political Theory: The Case of Two Ottoman Political Thinkers. Integr. psych. behav. 57, 496–517 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-022-09725-0

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